Alan Ziegler

August 11, 2017

From my father’s log of 1940 cross-country trip: “Reno, Aug 17. Went out to take the town. P.S. the town took us!”

Come one, come all, buy my vacuum cleaner. Be a friend of nature, for if there’s one thing nature abhors more than a vacuum, it’s a dirty vacuum.

Statute of Limitations Calendar App for Criminals: Enter the crime, the state, and the date, and the app will alert you when you can stop sweating it.

Overheard: “I hate to sound like an essentialist since I’m in fact a Yale-trained deconstructionist.”

From my father’s log of 1940 cross-country trip: “Between Gilroy and Ballard, Aug 21. Stopped at a road-side stand and had a 14-inch Hot Dog.”

Sometimes I wish you would turn traitor and lead them to me so I could see you one last time.

I trip and scrape my knee. I smile as I remember crying as a little boy when I fell. I think of John Berryman’s line “I am not a little boy,” and a tear re-emerges.

On the Trocadero Plaza I think of Hitler in the same place, nodding smugly at the Eiffel Tower: “This is mine.” You Nazi son of a bitch it’s mine now.

What my grandmother said when she found out a relative’s husband was a bigamist: “But he held her, he kissed her, he looked her in the eyes.”

From my father’s log of 1940 cross-country trip: Washington, DC, Sept 6. Arrived with $.54. Put gal. of gas — .16. Balance .38. Went to Police station to try & get a loan of a couple of dollars. (Got S- - t.). Still hadn’t eaten anything so went to Salvation Army to try & get a meal. (Again, got S - - t.) At about 11:00 p.m. – bought some food: .38. Cash now on hand $.00 Went to sleep.

August 02, 2017

We arrive at connected brick buildings in a clearing surrounded by Vermont; inside, khaki walls, urine, and sobs. We are told, “Students tend to be overly idealistic but this place isn’t bad for a mental institution. Try not to let it get to you and you’ll learn some things books can’t tell you.” I am only visiting with volunteers; they will all leave in a few weeks and I will leave even sooner.

I focus on Michael, who talks of Beatles, Stones, and Mets. I am told, “Michael won’t let you touch him, very erratic. He’s fourteen, been here since he shot his big brother six years ago. Under sedation he’s not too bad.”

I bring my guitar and he says, “Are you the Beatles can you wear your shoes like Mick Jagger is that Steppenwolf’s shirt?” I say no and he punches me in the nose, smiling at the drops of blood he has created. I am told, “Soon he’ll be transferred to the adult ward and that’s usually the kiss of death. His mother is dead and the father hardly visits, says he can’t cope with him.”

In front of everyone, Michael says to me, “Hey lemme see your pecker, is it big?” then cackles at my silence. He reaches for my guitar and I hand it to him, not wanting to set him off but also sensing that this is something he can touch for real. He strums, a-chordal but rhythmic, then sings in shrieks. He is me but less shy.

Michael shows me his secret treasures: Shea Stadium grass, John Lennon’s guitar pick, and the key to the laundry room (“Don’t tell!”). We hear someone approaching and Michael closes his hand tightly around his treasures.

I am told, “You’re getting too involved with Michael. I understand it’s tempting to try to save one patient, but you’ll have to handle all kinds.”

Michael takes me to the laundry room, opens the lock, locks the door, opens the lock. He asks me if I have ever seen the Mets play. I tell him I have, and he asks, “Do they sing, too?”

On my last day, we walk though dark halls and tunnels until under sunshine for our walk. Michael stops, makes his arms into a funnel and reaches up to me. I bend and he runs, laughing in circles around me, howling, throwing punches at the air. I want to pump him full of locked rooms.

March 21, 2017

Sealed condom in the pocket of jacket inherited from my father. After exploring possibilities I remember he worked in a motel….

Always the man hand-rolling bagels at a table in the small shop in Penn Station, his face as round as a bagel, never looking at the dough, eyes peeled on the ever-changing line of faces, once or twice a week mine….

I haven’t seen her in five years and the first thing she says: “Is that a new shirt?” Yes.

Patient on the children’s ward at the Vermont State Hospital, periodically punches himself in the face and says, “Oooch!”….

We order cheeseburgers. She brings hamburgers. Before we can say anything, she looks at the plates and says, “I spaced on the cheese….”

The little boy points to the author picture on the book I bring to class and says, “That looks like you.” I reply, “It is me.” He looks again and says, “It doesn’t look like you.”

March 09, 2017

For almost two years, through distractions and conflicts in the writing group, Lisa gets it done. She enjoys writing, even when it’s a struggle. Sometimes Lisa comes to the Teachers & Writers room alone to write—without any outside direction—in her notebook. Today she seems to be particularly happy with what she wrote, and I ask if I can see it:

My mother made a great promise. My father made one, too.

They both promised me to stop quarreling. At least for a little while.

My cousin made a promise, my uncle and aunt, too.

But they all broke their promises one by one.

I don't want a perfect family who would always dress up fancy and neat.

Just a family that keeps a promise, altogether, one.

As writing teachers, what do we want for our students? A good experience with writing—the feeling that it was worthwhile to take pen to paper—should be right up there on any list of goals. I ask Lisa about her experience, and she replies that she exaggerated, which made her feel better.

Sometimes we can “write well” but the piece has no life to it—the bones are assembled in the correct formation, the features are properly positioned, but the poor creature can’t laugh, cry, crouch, or dance. A week later, I read “My mother made…” to another class in another school. They listen, quietly, caught up in the words, in the presence of a living poem.

Marcus (fourth grade)

I notice him hovering around the doorway to the Teachers & Writers room during the lunch period. He inches his way barely across the border. I say hello and ask his name, which he slurs several times before I can make out “Marcus.”

I ask if he likes to write, and he shrugs. “Perhaps I can arrange with your teacher for you to come down to the room sometime.”

“I never go anywhere, I just stay in the classroom,” he replies.

I ask him to write down his name, teacher, and classroom number, and I’ll see if I can make arrangements for him to join a group. It takes Marcus a painful few minutes to get the information down. He is in class 4-3 (next to bottom on the tracking ladder), on the “2 fool.” I ask if he’d like to write something now. “Sure,” he says into his chest.

I suggest that he write down some things that are important to him—favorite food, sports, weather, whatever. I can then follow up based on the list.

He writes diligently but slowly for several minutes while I make myself look busy. When I look at Marcus’s paper, I am surprised and puzzled.

I am learning how to type. Am how to type. Learning am how to type. How am I to type learning? Me to is I type me.

Then I remember that earlier someone wrote on the blackboard “I am learning how to type.” Marcus has written like Gertrude Stein, without intentionality.

“Did you have fun with the words?” He nods. “How come you're not outside with the others?”

“Because I always get into trouble.”

“You get into trouble whenever you go out?”

“Yeah, I wind up fighting.”

“Don't you have anyone to be friends with?"

“Just my brother.”

“What class is he in?”

“4-4.”

I open a book I’ve been using with my classes, Fasanella's City—with childlike out-of-proportion paintings of city scenes—and point out two baseball paintings, one of the Polo Grounds and one of a sandlot game. We talk about the differences between the paintings, and he writes:

I saw men play baseball in yard and in stadium. Men hit ball in ran around bases They smile.

Lunch is almost over. Marcus goes back into the hallway. Will he return? How many other kids “never leave the classroom” who don’t wind up at our doorway.

Grace (senior citizen)

Last week Grace wrote a piece about seeing a deer in her backyard when she was in her twenties. The group marveled at how that deer could be brought to life—for all of us—with words, so many years later. Today Grace is writing along at a good pace when she stops abruptly and looks up at the ceiling as if the next line could be found there. She leans back, with a look of annoyed resignation. I know that look well, and I walk over to her, confident that I can help her out of her literary cul-de-sac. I read her incomplete poem and ask the questions I might ask myself if I were the author.

“I can’t write anymore,” she interrupts.

“Do you follow what I’m saying?”

“Oh, yes, I have plenty of my own ideas, but I can't write anymore.”

“I don't understand.”

“I just can't write. It’s this thumb, it goes dead on me.”

I offer to take dictation, but she isn’t able to verbalize her ideas. “I want to write.”

There is nothing either of us can do but wait until her thumb stops playing dead.

Shelly (fourth grade)

During my third session, the teacher points me toward Shelly, who isn’t writing. Her hair covers her face as she leans over her blank piece of paper, her pencil perched on the desk. Shelly says she has nothing to write. I ask if there’s anything or anyone that she feels strongly about. Finally, she confides that she does like her mother and her cat. After a few more minutes of conversation she writes a simple little poem about her mother and her cat. Shelly and I have both met the challenge. The teacher is impressed; Shelly has written a poem.

During succeeding visits, Shelly becomes more than a challenge. I am getting to like her, and she is getting attached to me. Since Shelly usually doesn't talk much, the teacher is anxious to know what we talk about: has she mentioned her family situation— rumor has it that her mother has a new boyfriend. Actually, Shelly and I don't talk about very important things; it is just important that we talk.

One morning I see Shelly at the other end of the hall. She doesn't see me. A boy bumps into her and then shouts to his friend, “Someone get me the cooty gun! Shelly touched me! Hurry, the cooties are all over me!” Shelly continues on into the classroom, without changing the expression on her face.

I am horrified, partly at the boy’s cruelty but mostly at Shelly’s lack of reaction. I imagine twisting the boy’s arm behind his back until he apologizes to Shelly, but I realize that even verbal coercion would reduce any apology to hollow words and result in more grief for Shelly.

I resolve to speak highly of Shelly in the hearing of other students—to use my position of prestige to heighten her class standing. I want very badly for Shelly to write terrific poems so I can read them to the class. But Shelly does not write terrific poems. She tries hard, but perhaps she is simply not capable. A learning disability, the teacher calls it. But Shelly does her best and improves, and I have to distinguish what is progress for her from what my ego wants, which is for her to dazzle everyone.

One day, a few minutes after making some suggestions for revision, I notice that Shelly is crying. I go over to her and ask if I said something that hurt her.

“I hate you,” she whispers, and returns her trembling head to her desk.

I walk away, myself near tears—have I become one more tormentor, my weapon more powerful than an imaginary cooty gun?

The teacher calls me over and says, “Shelly cries a lot. Always tears. The best thing is to ignore them, she'll be okay in a few minutes. I was going to tell you that Shelly's mother is getting married again and they're moving away from here.”

Later, I see Shelly in the remedial reading room, a place where she thrives with the small group and sympathetic teacher. I ask her if it is true that she is moving. She begins to cry.

Laverne (college)

I am teaching a Saturday morning noncredit remedial writing course. Some of the students border on illiteracy, even though they have high school diplomas. I have them do some creative writing, on the premise that if they perceive writing as an opportunity for recounting experiences and releasing feelings they will be better motivated to go through the rigors of mastering the technical aspects of writing.

Most of the students do well on the standardized test for admittance into the regular English courses (though not as well as I hoped). At the department’s end-of-semester party, I am talking to Laverne, one of the younger students, who tells me he is going to do reserve duty in the army but will return to school the following semester.Laverne looks at me with a distracted glint in his eyes and says, “Do you ever get the feeling that you just gotta drop everything you're doing and write a poem?"

"Yes—it's one of the most exciting moments in writing, that sense of urgency."

"Well, that's what I'm feeling right now."

“Do it!”

Laverne goes into a corner and writes in an abandoned exam book. He gives me this poem as he says goodbye:

TEACHERS

Teachers where did they come from, like the winds of this world, blowing north, south, east. west, being kind, cruel, happy, heartbreaking. Always moving, going one way, then another. Where do they come from these winds of learning? Touching our lives but for a few hours a day but changing us, shaping, like the wind blowing sand always changing it. Where do they come from these winds of learning? Are they human? Where do these winds of learning come from?

February 18, 2017

In the scarlet light of Valentine’s our paper hearts are blind from “Valentine Melody” by Larry Beckett and Tim Buckley (1966)

(Tim Buckley was born on Valentine's Day 1947; he died of a drug overdose at the age of 28.)

1) December 1966.While at school in Schenectady, a friend tells me about a new singer-songwriter whose voice is “angelic,” and he’s our age. His name is Tim Buckley, and he’ll be appearing on a bill with Frank Zappa at the Balloon Farm on St. Marks Place. Over break, I climb the stairs of the Balloon Farm toward my balcony seat. Leaning against the wall on one of the landings, alone, is a kid with curly black hair. Our eyes meet and I say, “You’re Tim Buckley.” He smiles and walks away with a wave. The next time I see him he is on stage, singing angelically. In the middle of his set he starts “One For My Baby,” but stops in the middle, says he can’t go on, and walks off the stage.

2) March 1968.Buckley is performing at the Fillmore East, but we’re stuck in Schenectady. We listen over and over to Goodbye and Hello, and I say, “He should know what he’s doing to us." I call the Fillmore and say, “Let me to speak with Tim Buckley."“He’s on stage right now. Can I give him a message?” “Yeah, tell him that we hear him in Schenectady.” “Far out, I'll let him know!”

3)July 1968.Cliff Safane and I (two-thirds of a folk/jazz group “The Shuttle”) obtain press passes to the Newport Folk Festival through the Union College newspaper. Cliff has brought his bass clarinet with the hope he could jam with Tim Buckley. We introduce ourselves to Tim in the outdoor backstage area, and arrange to meet him at his hotel.

Over lunch, he tells us that he had been called for his draft physical shortly after signing his first album contract with Elektra. “It’s what I always wanted, to make a record” he says, so he did everything he could possibly do wrong at the physical. “They pointed to a room down the hallway and I walked in that direction, straight into a wall.” He has perfected collecting a huge glob of spit on his mouth, which he did repeatedly at the physical. “The Army guy told me I was either the stupidest guy they’d ever seen, or the smartest; either way they didn’t want me.” We talk about Steve Noonan and Jackson Browne, who, along with Buckley, were dubbed the “Orange County Three” by Cheetah magazine. (More about Steve Noonan to come.)

After lunch Tim pauses on the stairway above the lobby, waits, eyes imperious, until he attracts some attention. Slowly around his mouth a huge wad of spit congeals and remains.

Back in his room, Tim improvises an extended scat, his voice melding with the chords on his 12-string. Cliff unpacks his bass clarinet and joins in. This is way above my musical pay grade, so I lean against the wall like Frank O’Hara at the end of “The Day Lady Died.” Later, Tim's girlfriend drives us back to the festival grounds. She introduces herself: “I’m Jainie. You know: ‘Jainie don’t you know….’”

4)July 1975.On July 7, I write a long (for me) poem, including:

...on the corner, they are talking about the horse who broke her leg today I watched the match race with my father, read the early editions, Foolish Pleasure vs. Ruffian, colt against mare the nation watching, wearing "He" and "She" buttons they didn't know if they could save her my father remembered when they used to shoot them right at the track when he used to go with his father I overhear someone say Ruffian has been "put to sleep" and it affects me though not as much as Rod Serling and Tim Buckley who also died recently and who meant a lot to me earlier Cliff called from Boston to talk about Buckley, it was not only that he died at 28, a year older than us but it reminded him how much has changed since they jammed at Newport in '68, the night before his performance the Newport Folk Festival is gone the women we were with then are gone and Buckley had been driving a cab, though there was talk of a comeback and Rod Serling, who'd taught me irony and voice I kicked myself for not having visited him he was a college professor at the end and probably accessible Serling was 50, younger than my father, and next month I will turn 28....

February 11, 2017

Two people on a bare stage; any combination of genders. (For this version, it’s a man and woman.) They stand in random places throughout the play, changing positions during each blackout, sometimes together in various poses, sometimes separated. Sometimes they speak to the audience; other times to each other.

MAN: In a crowd someone laughed. Thinking, incorrectly, it was me, a woman said:

WOMAN: What a sad laugh.

MAN: I was about to defend myself when she added:

WOMAN: But there’s sweetness in your eyes, so there’s hope for you.

MAN: We went off together, and I tried not to laugh.

(blackout)

MAN: A week later, when the joy was too much, I bellowed. She declared:

WOMAN: That laugh! I have changed your life.

(blackout)

MAN: The world doubled its offering: my two eyes and two ears were no longer sufficient. Only with our four eyes focused together and four ears tuned to the same frequency could I fully see the beauty in art and the sky, and completely hear the music of symphonies and breezes.

WOMAN: In the past, the best that others could do was to help me forget death briefly. With him, I could be reminded of death and still love life.

MAN: We laughed and frolicked and kissed and nuzzled and ravaged and napped and did it all over again.

WOMAN: They should’ve slapped a caption on us:

MAN: In happier days.

(blackout)

MAN: The voice on the radio was hysterical. We turned it louder until we couldn’t make out the words, drowning out the phone and sirens.

WOMAN: We shut the windows and harmonized in a hymn. My hands threw scary shadow figures from my past onto the wall.

MAN: My fist shadows pummeled them.

(blackout)

WOMAN: We discovered the formula for happiness, the roadmap to contentment, and the recipe for good living.

MAN: Unfortunately, we were terrible at following directions.

(blackout)

MAN: I truly believed that her orgasms were authentic, but I started to suspect that she was faking her understanding:

WOMAN: Oh. Oh. Oh. Yes. Yes. Yes. You poor thing, you!

(blackout)

MAN: When I told her I loved her, I was caught red-hearted returning to the scene of someone else’s crime. She studied me up and down as if cramming for an examination.

WOMAN: He passed the test. Time to make the questions harder.

(blackout)

MAN: I was an incurable optimist until I swallowed her medicine.She had me beside myself, and I hardly recognized the man standing next to me.Each time we parted, I was like a rocking chair she had gotten quickly out of.

WOMAN: He ran away from me in circles, and I ran circles around him.He surrendered, and I shredded his white flag.He went limp and bared his jugular, like a vanquished fox. I snapped at him.

MAN: I give up. You win. I will fight on.

(blackout)

WOMAN: He broke my heart in two. Then he quartered it.But each portion regenerated.Now I could run for miles, make love, weep at a sad movie, and still have one cold heart for him.In a dream of drowning, my life flashed before my eyes. He wasn’t there.

(blackout)

WOMAN: On my way away, I dropped by with a bottle of wine. I said, “I am running away from you. Wanna come?”

MAN: We drove out of state and checked into a motel. We laughed all evening. Then she closed up on me. I stared at the CD player: No disc.

WOMAN: It didn’t matter how far we had gone. The landscape inside us was the same.

MAN: She drove me to the bus station.

WOMAN: This time I was the one who pleaded…

MAN: And I was the one who erupted. Anger poured from places in me where I didn’t even know I had spouts.

(blackout)

MAN: I finally got myself to dial her number.

WOMAN: Hello?

MAN: I couldn’t answer that question. I hung up.

(blackout)

MAN: A night on the town, we agreed, like the old days, might fix it.We did the cab dance, to the pool hall of mirrors. I racked…

WOMAN: …and I broke. I ran the table, the balls homing into his pockets

MAN: When it was finally my turn, I could barely move.

(blackout)

MAN: Our first worthwhile moments were lust driven. Later, nostalgia joined the lust.

WOMAN: Now, we talked of old times, but ceased making new ones.

MAN: We talked about the past...

WOMAN: ...until weran out of past.

(blackout)

MAN: You know, I said, you don’t have to turn a mountain around to get to the other side.

WOMAN: God, I replied, I am so sick of you.

MAN: I presented my case with eloquent incandescence. I kept at it, on a roll, a tongue/brain parley to beat the band, I felt my saliva effervesce, something chemical was afoot, I was foaming with rhetorical hegemony.

WOMAN: You’re perfectly right, I said, and perfectly mad.

(blackout)

WOMAN: I put my finger on his wrist but could find no pulse.

MAN: We disagreed on the implications.

(blackout)

WOMAN: I held on to him long enough to convince him that if he said the right words I wouldn’t leave again.

MAN: I told her, It’s you and me against the world, babe.

WOMAN: And I replied, You are the world to me.

(blackout)

MAN: She got smaller as she walked away. I was going to pick her up when she became small enough, look into her tiny eyes, and assure her that she was safe with me. But I lost track of her.

(blackout)

WOMAN: I watched everyone in the world enter the room, except him. Now, even if he did show up, it would be too crowded. And what was he doing out there all alone?

MAN: The sadness of the empty dish after the unsatisfying meal. No longing for the food, but the hunger was sorely missed.

(blackout)

MAN AND WOMAN: A new one came along quickly. This one inexperienced, even naive. Oh, my thirst!Oh, how quick the quenching.My buried treasure. I broke you with my shovel.

(blackout)

MAN: News of the distant death made me smile, because I knew it would bring her back to me.

(blackout)

MAN:The door opened shyly, just a crack, then blossomed into her sad face.

October 23, 2016

Prologue: In late 1967, an English professor asked me to be Allen Ginsberg’s escort for his February 13 reading at Union College: “I think he’d be more comfortable with a student.” I wrote Ginsberg to ask if he’d add an event in our makeshift café, the North End. I figured I’d get a form letter from an assistant telling me Allen was too busy being Ginsberg.

I was half right. He was too busy being Ginsberg to make plans, but it was Allen himself who replied.

[Dear Mr. Z—I don’t know my schedule as it’s made up by others while I stay home & avoid correspondence & do my work — poesy, solitude as much as I can get. See you I guess there, I’ll keep yr. address & number thanks for good cheer — Allen Ginsberg]

Allen wound up staying at my apartment for three nights, before moving on to Rochester to meet with Norman O. Brown (whose Love’s Body was a hot topic). He visited classes, did radio interviews, and gave a reading at the North End (including “Wichita Vortex Sutra” and “Wales Visitation”).

Here, through the prism of distant memory, are some moments from Allen Ginsberg’s three days in Schenectady.

Fitz Hugh: Allen’s main reference point to Union College is that Fitz Hugh Ludlow went here. All we know about Ludlow is that he wrote Union’s alma mater in 1856.

Ode to Old Union (Alma Mater)

Let the Grecian dream of his sacred streamAnd sing of the brave adorning That Phoebus weaves from his laurel leaves At the golden gates of morning.

But the brook that bounds thro’ old Union’s groundsGleams bright as a Delphic water, And a prize as fair as a god may wear Is a dip from our Alma Mater.

Then here’s to thee, thou brave and free,Old Union smiling o’er us, And for many a day, as thy walls grow gray,May they ring with thy children’s chorus!

We have referred to the “brook that bounds” as the “creek that reeks,” and someone once suggested that Ludlow must have been high when he wrote it “gleams bright as a Delphic water.” Allen informs us that this, indeed, may have been the case, that a year after graduating from Union, Ludlow published The Hasheesh Eater. (Many years later, Allen would be on the board of advisors to the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library).

Dylan's Scarf: Allen notices the album jacket for Dylan’s John Wesley Harding propped against our stereo speaker, and points to the scarf worn by one of the people standing next to Dylan. “Dylan gave it to me,” Allen says, extending the scarf he is wearing.

Uncle Allen: Allen walks by the poster of him wearing an Uncle Sam hat. He stops, backtracks, and signs his name on the ribbon.

Bathtub: I awaken in the middle of the night and step into the bathroom, startled to see Allen Ginsberg in his underwear crouching over the bathtub. He is washing his blue jeans.

Milkshake: Cliff Safane, Steve Radlauer, Rich Balagur, and I are heading to the White Tower (a White Castle knockoff) down the street. We invite Allen to join us, but he declines. As we’re leaving, he calls out, “Can you bring me back a milkshake?” We explain to the young man behind the counter whom the milkshake is for. He smiles wearily at the Union boys having fun with the townie.

Kerouac as Poet: We ask Allen if he thinks we could get Kerouac to come to Union. He says we might, “If you invite him as a poet!”

Pigs and Beards: A local radio reporter asks Allen his reaction to the state government proposal to “put a pig in every pot.” Allen replies he doesn’t understand the question, and the radio guy repeats with "hip" inflection, “You know, a pig in every pot?”

I explain, “I think he means an undercover narcotics officer posted on every college campus.”

Another reporter asks him why he doesn’t shave his beard, and Allen replies, “I’m a traditionalist, my grandfather had a beard.”

Sunflower Tears: Word has gotten around about Allen’s extended stay, and I am fielding requests for his company, including overlapping invitations for dinner at a fraternity house and a visit to Professor Jocelyn Harvey’s Modern Poetry class. (See more about Jocelyn Harvey, one of my most influential teachers here).

We decide he can do both: I’ll signal when it’s time to leave the class and head over to the fraternity. But as the time approaches, Allen is reading “Sunflower Sutra” (“Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul…Look at the Sunflower, he said…I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions…”) He segues to Blake’s “Ah! Sun-flower”:

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Tears trickle down Allen Ginsberg’s face. He tells us he is having a vision of Neal Cassidy (“Dean Moriarty” in On the Road and “N.C., secret hero of these poems” in “Howl”), who died ten days ago alone in the cold and rain alongside a railroad track in Mexico.

No way am I getting in the way of this magic moment. I decide to blow off the fraternity.

(Several years later, a high school friend meets a couple of Union College graduates. My friend asks if they knew me, and one replies, “Yeah, he’s a real bastard. He wouldn’t share Allen Ginsberg.”)

Party Talk: At a party at our apartment, Allen is talking to the painter Arnold Bittleman. Bittleman describes how he often paints deep into the night, looks admiringly at his canvas, and goes to bed convinced that he has created a great work of art—only to discover in the morning that someone must have broken in and ruined his painting. Ginsberg replies that he used to feel that way, but now, even as he is writing, he’ll think: “This is the same old bleeeecchhh.”

A little later, Allen talks with two men about having children. Allen says he would like to have a child, but is not sure he could have the kind of relationship with a vagina that would require. A professor wails, “I’ll never know what it’s like to be pregnant!”

Classroom Talk:

Snippets (non-sequential) from a classroom visit, transcribed from a cassette tape that somehow survived being spindled after all these years:

“Our own inventions change our conditions because our inventions are extensions of our senses…what Zen is preaching what everybody is preaching is awareness of the conditions so we don’t get trapped in the conditions and ignorant of what’s moving us around…we can change the conditions.”

“The ecological disturbances caused by the technology have now gotten out of hand.”

“I’m not against technology and science. I’m calling yoga another kind of technology.”

“The whole funeral ceremony the Forest Lawn mythology of America; the way we treat death—unlike other cultures—gets to be that the sight of a corpse can freak somebody out.”

“Gee, it’s hard to know [what Buber is saying]. I haven’t read all through Buber. I went and talked to him…”

“You’re lucky around here at Union College, you’ve got trees.”

“Unlike the Western forms that say, ‘Hell is permanent, heaven is permanent, God is a bearded man and you better behave. Eternal damnation!’ IMAGINE: eternal damnation—a thing that couldn’t exist without language!”

August 02, 2016

In my first few years teaching I conducted creative writing workshops—with students ranging from six to eighty years old—in public schools (including my former elementary and high schools), community libraries, colleges, P.T.A. meetings, and senior citizens centers, in the five boroughs and beyond. I had one-shot sessions with groups as large as sixty students, and met once a week with a single student for a school year. Most of my workshops were sponsored by Teachers & Writers Collaborative, N.Y. Poets in the Schools, and Poets & Writers, but I also did sessions for groups with names like Young Visitors and Sub Sub.

If it’s Tuesday it must be Yonkers because Wednesday is Lynbrook and Thursday is Spring Valley. A well-kept (and consulted) appointment book became essential. One morning I got a call from the Ardsley Library. “Oh hi, I’m looking forward to seeing you next week,” I said. “There are thirty children here who were looking forward to seeing you a half hour ago,” was the cold response.

I had to be careful with the amount of work I took, to allow time for writing. The idea is for writers to preach what they practice, not what they used to practice. I could not make a living writing poems, but I could support myself helping others write poems. Some of our students would likely wind up teaching others to write, who would then, etc., resulting in an exponential growth in creative writers. One night, overscheduled and underwritten, I imagined a grant proposal to deprogram former students: “You’re upset or rapturous with joy? Pick up the damn phone!” (I also facetiously proposed prenatal workshops, but it turned out I wasn’t too far off on that one.)

I wasn’t making a fortune, but I was fortunate. Teaching was not at conﬂict with art but in itself an art form. In both writing and teaching, you can alternate between having control, relinquishing control, and sharing equally; it is the wise writer or teacher who knows when it is appropriate to be in charge or to let things happen. Usually the teaching fed into and out of my writing. The same creative energy that fueled my writing also contributed to my teaching. I must constantly find ways for students to make it new, make it real, and make it finished. Instead of struggling with the development of one poem (my own), I sometimes felt like a chess whiz scampering from writer to writer helping each make a move. It was exhilarating.

I experienced the same kinds of ups and downs in my teaching as I did in my writing. Sometimes I was on and the room seemed to glow with energy. In discussing exemplary texts, I almost always taught myself something new. Other times I was off and had to draw on professionalism to complete the task. There were moments when I was exhausted with language, indifferent to imagery, and I felt like Sartre’s bad-faith café waiter, playing the role of writing teacher. But good things often came out of such bad faith, and I had much more confidence as a teacher when I realized I didn’t always have to feel fine to do fine work.

I didn’t plan to be a teacher of creative writing any more than I planned to be a creative writer. I arrived at each from chance opportunities that acted as catalysts for desire, determination, and talent. I wasn’t the kind of child who had a treasure chest of special books; I didn’t sneak into a corner after dinner and write poetry or my autobiography. My first ﬂing with writing came in fifth grade because I couldn't sing—or so the music teacher determined. He selected all but five of the kids in my class to be in the chorus. My teacher, perhaps in order to soften the blow, made us the newspaper staff.

My attempts at creative writing were mostly confined to song lyrics until the spring of my senior year in college (1970), when I began writing fragmentary poems (inﬂuenced by Richard Brautigan) during brief respites from anti-war and campus protests. Two days after graduation I was a reporter on the Binghamton Evening Press. My newspaper career lasted only a few months. In a scene reminiscent of a “B" newspaper movie, a senior editor advised me to “be a writer” while I was young and could deal with insecurities and frustrations. He pointed to an aging colleague and said, “He waited too long before he quit. Came back with his tail between his legs.”

I moved back to New York City, thinking I would write in-depth, novelistic, investigatory, sensitive journalism. A friend told me of an ad in the Village Voice for a poetry workshop conducted by David Ignatow at the 92nd St. Y. You had to send in six poems; 12 people would be selected. I had harbored secret “poet" fantasies, and I thought that the workshop could help my prose writing, so I sent in six of my little poems. I was accepted into the workshop, and my life changed. Journalism stepped into the back seat, and poetry got behind the wheel.

This is over-simpliﬁed, but I tell it because it was crucial to the attitude I brought into my classes. I was living proof that poets do not belong to a separate breed recognizable in the cradle. For many of us, an encouraging and sympathetic teacher can be of enormous help in our poetic growth. For me, it was David Ignatow in 1971. But who knows? If my fifth grade teacher had decided that those not selected to be in the chorus could work with a visiting poet I might have gotten started much earlier. So, when I went into a classroom, it was with the belief that anyone could connect with creative expression and invention.

My beginning as a teacher was also partly a matter of circumstance. I had heard of people who taught poetry writing to children, but I had never worked with kids in any capacity and thought that I would need special training to attempt it. One afternoon during the fall of 1973, Stuart Milstein (a graduate school classmate) called and asked me if I could, on short notice, do a few poetry workshops in a Brooklyn elementary school, filling in for someone who had just dropped out of the program Stuart had organized. I was scared, but I said I’d try it. If I screwed up it was Stuart’s fault. Stuart told me that Teachers & Writers Collaborative had some publications that might be of help.

There wasn’t time for me to send away for the books, so I went to the T&W office, which was housed in P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village. Entering the building, I realized I hadn’t been in an elementary school for 16 years. The sounds and smells seemed eerily similar to my old school so many years and miles away, and immediately I felt younger and smaller. I knew T&W’s office was on the fifth ﬂoor, but I didn't know which room. I poked my head into several classrooms before I found someone who pointed me in the right direction. Going up stairways and through halls gave me the deja vu feeling of somehow doing something wrong: going up the down stairs, being in the hallway when you weren’t supposed to. By the time I found the right room, I was having second thoughts about making a reappearance in an elementary school disguised as a teacher. The kids wouldn't believe it for a second.

The Collaborative office was a classroom with stacks of books, envelopes, and papers. I walked in and shyly introduced myself to a man who was composing a letter. It was the director, Steve Schrader. I told him about the program I was going to be working in and asked him exactly what was Teachers & Writers Collaborative. He set aside his work, gave me a cup of Postum, and talked to me about their work in the schools.

I left the ofﬁce with a pile of free books and an embryonic feeling of my future within me. My sessions in Brooklyn left me hungry for more. I participated in a T&W-supported training program led by Bill Zavatsky (Bowery Bob Holman was also on the team), and my mother hooked me up with my former elementary school for a series of workshops. I learned as I went along, in front of a class. I submitted an article to the Teachers & Writers Newsletter. It was rejected, but Steve asked me if I would be interested in working in a school in Brooklyn the following fall.

Shop talk appeals to almost everyone; exchanging ideas or just exclaiming and complaining. For most among the new breed of touring writers and artists there wasn’t ample opportunity to meet with colleagues. I treasured my association with Teachers & Writers Collaborative because it provided me with a home base inhabited by a professional family. Teachers & Writers offered extended residencies—you become, in effect, an adjunct faculty member—and they published newsletters, books, and anthologies.

Because I had only been writing poetry for a couple of years, and had just a dozen days teaching experience when I was hired by Teachers & Writers, I was particularly nervous about my highly-accomplished new colleagues. Virtually every article I had read in T&W’s publications was articulate and inventive, often displaying vulnerability and uncertainty. This open spirit eased my intimidation somewhat, but it even seemed to me that T&W people were better at being honest than the rest of us.

So, it was accompanied by a classroom of butterflies in my stomach that I went to my first T&W meeting, at the apartment of then-associate director Glenda Adams, in September 1974. I had just begun working for the Collaborative at P.S. 11 in Brooklyn, along with artist Barbara Siegel and novelist Richard Perry. Barbara was also new to T&W, and the two of us sat together on the couch and talked about P.S. 11 while we sneaked glances at the socializing going on around us. Many had not seen each other over the summer, so there were hugs and smiles. It was heartening to see such a close group, and I wondered how long it would take me to feel a part of it. I wanted it to happen right away but knew it had to come naturally. It didn’t take long for someone to notice the new kids. Karen Hubert—whose articles I had particularly liked for their humanity—came over to Barbara and me and said, “I don’t know you two....but I’d like to.”

In January of my first year with T&W, I was asked to do a lengthy piece on the Collaborative for The American Poetry Review. I accepted, partly because it would give me a chance to talk with everyone about their work, speeding up the assimilation process. One by one, each person confirmed feelings of connection to and freedom within T&W. Everyone felt an implicit demand for hard and good work but was secure that each individual determined objectives and strategies. (If you have access to JSTOR, the APR piece can be found here.)

The only discontent I heard was a nostalgia for the conﬂicts of the late sixties and early seventies, and the notion that perhaps our stability and hominess were at the price of not dealing assertively with social issues. I had an ambivalent reaction to this. I had been active in the student movements of the 60s, and missed talk of lofty goals. But it was also a relief to be involved with a group that didn’t fight within itself, and didn't have a distorted notion of its capabilities for social change—a group whose ideology is embodied in its daily work.

I was given the room to grow and develop, but I still had to grow and develop. My own creative pride, bordering on stubbornness, was such that I rarely went in with an exercise lifted directly from a book or from another writer, at least not without a twist or variation of my own. Whenever possible, I tried to do things I had conceived myself. (I might later find out that something had been done before, much to my annoyance.) I developed a full bag of teaching tricks, but I tried not to teach by rote—even if it was my own rote. Teaching creativity means teaching creatively. It has less to do with formulas and more to do with human beings and familiarity with such processes as discovery, recall, adaptation, inﬂuence, connection, manipulation: the use of language to create, re-create, and, not to be forgotten, recreate. Gradually, my presentations became more complicated, with more possibilities for writing. I had an obsession to type every good piece written by my students, so they wouldn’t vanish like unrecorded jazz improvisations, and I could share them with other students.

I had embarked on a career.

(Adapted from Journal of a Living Experiment edited by Phillip Lopate. Photograph by Joseph Szabo.)

July 24, 2016

In mid-March 1996, Erin and I whisper-argue in the bedroom while my father lies on the sofa bed in the living room watching Family Feud. I would appreciate the irony if my father wasn’t having surgery in the morning for advanced colon cancer.

The surgeon is a rotund, jolly fellow around 60, rated by New York Magazine as one of the best. He put my father at ease during the office visit, which is not easy for a doctor to do. The last thing the surgeon said was, “You’ll be dancing the tarantella in six weeks.”

I leave Erin in the bedroom, hoping my father hasn’t overheard our quibbling. My father’s hospital pajamas are in a plastic supermarket bag, his blue slacks draped over a chair. He is wearing baggy boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. He is engrossed in The Feud.

“So that’s the guy who replaced Richard Dawson?” I ask as I sit on the edge of the bed.

“Yeah—a few years ago. They canned him—this is a rerun. It’s a shame. I liked him.”

I can tell that my father was rooting for this boyish man who landed a dream job. We watch as he schmoozes with a boisterous, healthy-looking family, then smiles sweetly as mom, dad, and adult children jump up and down, hugging in celebration of a “good answer.” I like the new—now fired—host. What a rough day it must have been when he was let go, though not as rough as being told you have cancer—even if the surgeon is also a good schmoozer.

I think about how, in the next few weeks—whether my father makes it through or not—the surgeon and host will move on: the surgeon telling others they’ll be dancing the tarantella, and the host smiling boyishly on the set of a new game show. But tonight, as I sit on the edge of the sofa bed with my cancer-ridden father while my wife fumes at me from the bedroom and my father’s wife is long dead, I am grateful for the company of the sweet ex-host and the jolly surgeon.

By the Fourth of July, I will read in the obituaries that the surgeon died of a massive heart attack and the host hung himself with bed sheets in a closet of a psychiatric ward.

Though he will never dance the tarantella, my father will live to mourn them both.

July 08, 2016

In 1953 Brooklyn, boys are required to wear ties to school; most of us have one or two clip-ons, worn until they become invisible. Except for the little man—he has many ties, and they are always perfectly knotted. Each morning after he takes off his coat he pauses at the classroom mirror and adjusts his tie. “Windsor knot,” he announces to anyone who stares.

One day, the little man and I stay after school to help the teacher rearrange the bookshelves. It is taking a long time, and I start to toss in the books. The little man says, “My father always says, ‘If you are going to do something, get it right.’” I am impressed, and we redo the shelf.

On the first day after Christmas vacation, the teacher—younger than my mother—asks the class to gather in the story area because she has something to tell us. The little man was killed in a car accident over the vacation. She could have told the class he moved away, she says, but she thinks we should always know the truth.

Now a grown man, I can’t remember what the little man looked like. But I can picture this vividly: It’s a December blizzard night. The little man’s family is going visiting. His father is warming up the car. “Hurry up, dear, we’re late,” his mother says gently as the little man stands, his back to me, at the mirror next to the Christmas tree, getting his Windsor knot just so.

July 02, 2016

I have concluded my self-imposed hiatus from this blog, and will be posting regularly again.

But I wanted to pre-restart with a note about Max Ritvo's forthcoming book of poems, Four Reincarnations, which will be published this Fall by Milkweed. (A poem from the book recently appeared in The New Yorker). Two days after Max joined two of my classes at Columbia in January 2014, I learned that he is terminally ill with Ewing's Sarcoma, a state of being that is in the text or subtext of many of his poems. But his poems—and his life—are about so much more. Max is one of the most intellectually and artistically gifted people I have ever known (he is also a wonderful performer). Timothy Donnelly—among others—has spoken splendidly about Max's work. For now, I will appropriate Max's own words:

A CENTO FOR MAX RITVO’S FOUR REINCARNATIONS

moving, joy, moving I am given a rewardso passionately and imaginativelythough the images vary exhaustingly and troublingly

much more beautiful than either one of our voicesyour brain binds around mine, a gold gauzethis is how love works

thou art me before I am myselfyou have my thoughts faster than I caneven of the imagination sizzling on top of it

I will live in your small ecstatic brainfor the possession of our smallest sensationsthis is purity

who brings a kind of reliefin the middle of a blizzardno one can speak the language you will rewrite

November 27, 2015

My first computer, in the early 1980s, is a Kaypro (C/PM operating system) bundled with WordStar (“the most popular word processor ever invented”) and a JUKI daisywheel printer. I select the Kaypro because an article in New York magazine calls it “the computer of choice for New York writers.” I buy it at the purchasing place of choice, Wolff’s (near Columbus Circle), where New York writers are milling about like musicians at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center in the early 60s (well, I assume they’re all writers).

The Kaypro boasts of a built-in “large 9-inch display” with green phosphor characters, and 64K of RAM. (My IBM Selectric has the equivalent of one byte of RAM: if you hit two keys almost simultaneously, it “remembers” the second letter and spaces it properly.) The Kaypro stores files on 400K floppy disks, and the whole machine folds into a hard-shell “transportable” case—convenient if you’re not trying to transport it very far.

Once I get the system up and running, I notice that WordStar defaults to justified right-hand margins, which I dislike (especially in drafts). I change the default, but now the spaces between letters are wackily uneven, making for a disjointed printout. I call Wolff’s and Kaypro, but nobody knows what I’m talking about. Am I the only New York writer who has this issue—I can hear Dylan wailing “Oh my God am I here all alone?” I call a New York writer friend who says he doesn’t have the problem, then looks at a printout and realizes he does but it doesn’t bother him. I am bothered.

Eventually I reach someone at WordStar who says, “I know what you mean. A rabbi called last week with the same problem.” He explains that the culprit is “microjustifcation,” which is what makes justified text look professional but stays on even when justification is turned off. “I guess we should put those together,” he says. There’s a “dot command” (huh?) to turn off microjustification: “Just type .uj off at the top of the page."

Voila! It works! But .uj off has to be typed at the very top of every page that gets printed, which means deleting and replacing the code whenever a page is revised. Back to my WordStar friend, who says he shouldn’t be telling me this but there’s a hidden array of commands that can only be reached by typing a hyphen. He gives me directions to change the default to microjustification-off, and my documents print out perfectly without typing any codes.

Then my JUKI printer quits, with no justification of any sort. I lug the machine to Wolff's. While I'm crossing the street, a stranger looks at me and announces: “Another JUKI breakdown!”

November 10, 2015

The Set-up. With my family in Manhattan for the first time, I am told that the Empire State Building is a skyscraper. As we get closer, I notice that the pole on top—which I assume is the skyscraper—disappears from view.

The Bit. I lead my family back to where we can see the pole: “Look at the skyscraper!” Then I march us closer, point up, and say, repeatedly, holding my head, “What, noskyscraper?!”

2) You never know who might be in the audience; age 11:

A bunch of us get interested in pro wrestling, and we construct a backyard ring using rope, trees, and garbage cans. I don’t really like doing the wrestling, so I pick up a fallen branch and turn it into a microphone. I announce the fights, calling for Killer Kowalski’s famous “claw hold” (his deadly match-closer that makes no combative sense), and occasionally throwing in a phrase I saw in a wrestling magazine: “a tangle of arms and legs.” I improvise names and characters for the wrestlers. “The Ape Man wins again. But it’s under protest, here comes the doctor to test whether he has human genes. Oh no! He really is an ape and he’s disqualified. He’s going ape!” Twenty years later, at a literary event I meet a scholar who is from my hometown. “I know you,” she says. “You were friends with my son. I used to watch you calling the wrestling from the window and think, “What a clever boy.”

3)My first recorded pun, in my journal of a family road trip; age 12:

“We woke up early and hit the road. When our hands hurt, we got into the car and drove off.”

4) My father shows me how to construct a joke with no words; age 13:

My father takes out a comic strip he keeps folded up in his wallet. As I scan the four captionless panels, he grins with anticipation: In the first panel, a portly schlub wearing a bowler hat catches his dog peeing on the couch. In the second panel, the schlub scolds the dog. In the third panel, the schlub and the dog are outside and the schlub is peeing against a tree while the dog watches. In the fourth panel, the dog is once again peeing against the couch, but now he is standing on his hind legs, holding his penis with his front paws. My father is immensely relieved when I can’t stop laughing.

5) My first comic in the flesh; age 13:

I’m at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah at Carl Hoppl’s in Baldwin (not the lower-class Carl Hoppl’s in Valley Stream, where I had my Bar Mitzvah). After the reception, we’re moved into the nightclub, where the headliner is Morty Gunty (who, a few years later, would follow the Beatles on Ed Sullivan). Gunty switches accents as he flails about. He becomes a beautiful woman undressing in a hotel room when she notices a window washer perched outside, going about his business. She decides to give him a thrill by taking off her blouse. No reaction. She removes her skirt. Nothing. She starts to dance provocatively. By this time Gunty is really cooking, miming suggestive gestures while making mating sounds. Finally she gives up and glares at the window washer. Gunty becomes the window washer as he peeks in and says, “Vat’s the matter, lady, you never seen a vindow vasher before?” We are hysterical, but the joke falls flat whenever we try to retell it.

6) Three punchlines to jokes my friends and I laughed at when we were kids but I now find decidedly unfunny (except for the third one, which is a little funny):

“Why does this pickle have bones in it?” “That’s not rice, that’s lice!” “About six inches.”

7) Five punchlines to jokes I love that I’ll tell at the drop of a hat (if the hat lands heads):

“Duke! Get away from that guy before he shits all over you!” “What the fuck was that?” "Because the dog is a damn liar.” “My agent was at my house!?” “Do you have any herring?”

8) Best laugh by an actor in an underrated motion picture:

John Huston in Lovesick after Dudley Moore yanks off a tablecloth at a formal dinner. I use it as my ringtone.

For years, Nick Bozanic and I tried to collaborate on a joke, whenever our work and lives crossed: in Tallahassee, New Orleans, DeLand, Grand Rapids, Charlottesville, Traverse City, New York City. Nothing, though we continued to make people laugh with witty remarks. But remarks are not literature, and clever remarks are not jokes. Finally, we came up with one:

I connected my Cuisinart to my Macintosh and made alphabet soup.

Nick said he would try it out on one of his classes. Students will laugh at almost any joke from a teacher.

Nick called the next day to report that he didn’t even get a grin. “Maybe it was the delivery,” I said. “Let me hear how you told it.”

“Last night I connected my Cuisinart to my Macintosh and made vegetable soup,” Nick said, with a perfect, dry delivery.

I roared with laughter.

10) Insert section explaining humor in linguistic and poetic terms, using the construction of a metered poem as a template?

October 26, 2015

1980, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn are leading a quartet at Fat Tuesdays. After two wonderful sets, I’m about to leave when I overhear a waiter say that someone representing Frank Sinatra just called to reserve a table for the last set.

The scheduled time comes; no Sinatra. The musicians drink and smoke and look at their watches. One of them says he heard a rumor that Sinatra is going to do his next album with a jazz quartet, so perhaps he’s on a scouting mission. “Aw, the hell with Sinatra, let's play,” Zoot says, quickly adding, “Just kidding. We can wait for him.”

Finally, a party comes in: a couple of tough-looking guys, and a young couple dressed like they have come from a prom. Trailed by Sinatra, looking tired, dressed in what I assume is the first thousand-collar suit I have seen in person. Nobody pays overt attention to Frank, but peripheral vision runs rampant.

Al Cohn and Zoot Sims resume swinging. A woman in her early fifties breaks the code and bee-lines toward Sinatra with a menu in one hand and a pen in the other. One of the bodyguards emerges from the shadows and cuts her off. Sinatra slightly lifts a finger, nods, and the bodyguard backs off.

The woman puts the menu in front of Sinatra and says something. He beckons her closer, and she whispers into his ear. Sinatra nods again and signs the menu. The woman walks away with a big smile—no one else approaches—and Sinatra turns back to the music, keeping time—or maybe making time happen—with his eyes.

October 20, 2015

You know those commercials featuring “the most interesting man in the world?” Tom Meschery should have gotten the gig.

Bio Note #1: Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He received an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where his teachers included Mark Strand, Marvin Bell, and Helen Chasin. After Iowa, Tom ran a bookstore, taught for Poets in the Schools, and did physical labor before receiving his teaching credentials. He joined the faculty of Reno High School, where he taught Advanced Placement English and creative writing for 25 years; he also taught at Sierra College. Tom is the author of several books of poetry, including Nothing We Lose Can Be Replaced, Some Men, and Sweat: New and Selected Poems About Sports; he has also published the nonfiction Caught in the Pivot. In 2001 he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Bio Note #2: Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He was an All-American basketball player in high school and college, and an NBA All Star. He played ten years, mostly for The Warriors (first in Philadelphia and then in San Francisco) and later for the Seattle Supersonics, appearing in two NBA Finals. His #31 has been retired by Saint Mary’s College (where his career rebounding record stood for 48 years), as has his #14 by the Warriors. Tom coached the Carolina Cougars and was the assistant coach for the Portland Trailblazers. In 2003 he was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame.

I’ve been fascinated by Tom Meschery since I heard about a former NBA star, whose name was often prefixed with “hard-nosed,” turning from personal fouls to personal poems. I started a list of “athletes who write poetry” for use with reluctant students when I toured high schools. Not long after my father died in 2001, I was moved and impressed by Tom’s poem “Working Man," in which he addresses his late father (more about this later). Over the years, I have read the poem to several of my Columbia classes, and one day a student said: “He was my high school English teacher!” Interesting.

Recently, I talked to Tom (while he was recovering from his second shoulder replacement surgery); this piece is based on that conversation and other sources (see note on bottom).

Manchuria to the NBA

Thomas Nicholas Meschery was born Tomislav Nikolayevich Mescheryakov. His father was a hereditary officer in Admiral Kolchak’s Army. His mother was the daughter of Vladimir Nicholayavich, who participated in Kornilov’s failed coup against Kerensky: “My grandpa was put under arrest in the Winter Palace. Together with Nicholas II.” Tom’s mother was related to the poet Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (second cousin to Leo).

Tom’s parents met, in exile, in Manchuria, and Tom was born in 1938. In 1939, Tom’s father went ahead to San Francisco; his mother was to follow with Tom and his sister when they obtained the necessary papers. They were awaiting voyage on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Mescheryakovs were placed in a Tokyo-area internment camp for women and children, where “there was no suffering” and they were fed well. Towards the end of the war, the guards gave them the rejects from intercepted Red Cross packages (lots of spam).

They finally made it to San Francisco. In “A Small Embrace,” Tom writes in his mother’s voice addressing him; the poem ends:

a voice kept yelling over the loudspeaker: citizens to the left,

stateless to the right. A band was playing something cheerful.

You pointed to the wrong father. I to the wrong husband.

Tom’s weak English was mitigated by his size and athletic prowess. He became a star basketball player at Lowell High School, where he developed his game in a modest facility that was “full of shadows” with a corduroy floor and wood backboards.

October 08, 2015

1969. I get a temp job on Manhattan’s diamond block, West 47th between 6th and 7th, working in an upstairs room sorting and transporting gems from bins into marked envelopes. It is menial, minimum wage. The perk for me is spending my lunch hour across the street at the Gotham Book Mart; I can see the Wise Men Fish Here sign from my window.

On my left works an old woman with a concentration camp tattoo on her forearm; on my right a young man with a lizard on his biceps. The young man asks me to join him for lunch and tells me that he’s been watching the operation for a while. He has determined that the managers do not know exactly what they have until we sort the gems; how easy it would be to slip a few in our pockets each day. He proposes that we take turns on lookout duty. I decline.

That afternoon, one of the bosses approaches the young man, says, “Can I talk to you for a minute,” and escorts him out of the room. I never see him again. He likely believes that I ratted him out. So be it, but I devoutly hope the old woman doesn’t think the same.